per avion - “my white whale”
I’ve wanted to make a video game since I was a kid. I remember the wonder I felt playing Shadow of the Colossus, the beauty of Journey. playing Coma and realising for the first time that even a single person, using Flash, could make something intriging and beautiful. And even before this, I remember drawing in one of my many notebooks, designing characters an vehicles and levels and writing about what I wanted- an inadvertently, I was making my first design docs, long before I even knew what that meant.
I faced a slight issue though- I have the patience of a gerbil, even less so as a kid. So I would try from time to time to approach Unity with no plan, or a plan WAY too ambitious for me to actually do, make some initial progress, thenlosing momentum and giving up. And it was like that for many years, on and off, until 2022, when I finally managed to narrow my scope to something I could actually accomplish, finishing my first game "Duck Park", after which I am happy to report I have completed 7 projects in total, each one a development on the last in one way or another.. But even before this first game, I had a project idea in the back of my mind-
The idea of what this game is actually supposed to be has been...elusive. At first, I wanted to make it about delivering letters from island to island, battling through weather- but this turned out to be too complex for me at the time. The next idea was as a time trial type game- but I couldn't make the world feel cohesive enough. All I knew is that I wanted to make a game where you fly a very old airplane.
I’ve always loved old aircraft. The romance, the innocence of the pioneer age of flight, when just getting into the air was an accomplishment, and the desire to fly was not a commercial concern, but a decision born of the spirit of adventure. My father and grandfather used to take me to the RNAS museum near our home, and I still remember the smell of oil and metal, the faint hum of an engine turning into a roar as some old prop plane roared overhead at the airshows, my dads collection of old airplane magazines.
So when the idea of mking my own games began to embed itself in my mind, the concept of making a flying game seemed obvious. I think I have attempted this project three times now? Maybe four? I wish I had screenshots or recordings of some of those early attempts, they were...well, we're all learning!
My issue was that, beyond wanting to fly an old plane, I didn't REALLY know what it was going to be about. My first idea was some kind of postal/courier game- then a time trial game. The issue with the first was that making this idea fun would require A LOT of additional features, which at the time I did not feel capable of doing. The second idea was simply too boring.
But NOW it finally has the direction it needed - as a war game. Complex enough to be engaging, simple enough for a subpar coder like myself to actually make.
I have mixed feelings about making a war game. I'm categorically opposed to war, yet simultanouesly facinated by it. The apparent contradiction is not lost on me. Two factors have however bought me around to it- firstly, it's very cartoony. It's not designed to realistically replicate actual warfare, it's an arcade game. Secondly, the story and world building are inherently anti-war (inspired by the absolute trash fire of WW1, as well as the Balkan Wars and the Italo-Turkish war).
I have done a LOT of world building for this, intially in service to a different game (which I may make one day). I wish there was a good way to share it with someone, I'm really proud of what I have so far, I think it's really got some legs. I hope that I will find ways to incorporate this story into per avion in the long run, but I am not sure yet how to do this.
Progress for this project has been blindingly fast (at least for me!)- it's as if every lesson learned is suddenly coming together, and my capacty to create increasingly complex projects is growing. This is exciting to me- I have a swath of game concepts and ideas which I have been developing for years, but lacking the skills and knowledge to make them. Suddenly, they feel much closer.
I am not sure where things will go from here. Will I finish per avion? Will I make it to be all the things I wanted it to be? I don't know. Perhaps it will always remain unfinished, the carrot on the stick. We will see.